When the outcome is known (drowning in the pool or dying via electrocution while playing with electrical outlets)
And the initial conditions are known (a stubborn child who simply won’t listen to reason, or one incapable of understanding consequence of action but both of whom respond to a painful deterrent)
And the function is staying alive with the memory of a spanking (which will be seen in the proper context as time unfolds) or dying, which is worse? Being spanked or being dead?
Is trade-off part of a parents decision making process or are we genuinely absolute on corporal punishment being the end of the world even though it’s been around since the beginning of recorded history and we’ve all progressed significantly anyways?
Typically corporal punishment is an escalation. I’m going to respectfully bow out as I feel like we’ve reached the point where intentional avoidance over acknowledging practical reality has to be maintained to carry a point.
This pretty much tells me that you have no earthly clue what life where I lived in the 1950’s. You will never understand the “premises” imbedded in the minds of those kids.
If you were transported into the 1950’s you would think that you were in heaven, apart from some creature comforts, which would probably kick your butt (at least, until your body acclimated to them.) Home were typically 1,100 sq ft, without AC and only a centrally located oil furnace. Milk was delivered to the front door a couple times a week. The school didn’t have AC either. But there was AC in the grocery stores and department stores. Most everyone had a black and white CRT TV, and many used the vacuum tube testers at the 7-Eleven to fix their TV. Very few cars had AC and nobodies truck did, or did trucks have a back seat. Want information? Watch the 6:00pm NEWS; we had two networks to choose from. There was always the library, and if your parents were thinking of their kids education at home, they had some encyclopedias, which BTW were sold door-to-door, like life insurance.
Now I ask you. Where is any kid going to get the notion that corporal punishment might be considered bad parenting? WHERE? “Licks”, as we called them. were handed out from 7th grade up, and no kid questioned it. Premises to your “scientific” conclusion! They were not the same as today or even the last 50+ years. The Dr. Spock seed had yet to come to harvest.
If you cannot see the difference, your surroundings have blinded you. Conclusions based on inaccurate premises are faulty, even if they are impeccably logical.
I could say the same that your logic is stuck in the view of growing up in a different era. Maybe (likely) parents and scientists didn’t know the very real negative outcomes of spanking at the time. And they did their best with the given knowledge.
We (humans collectively) now know the outcome. Therefore since we have the knowledge we should act on that. In science when you reach new conclusions you act on that data.
You can piss on the studies I cited all you want but they were compiled by people who know more about psychology than you or I (being engineers).
Again, this doesn’t preclude the negative outcomes from occurring. It’s only that attitudes toward and knowledge of those outcomes were drastically different.
What you’re saying is equivalent to saying earthquakes weren’t as able to cause immense damage back in the day because we didn’t understand what caused them and attributed them to “angered gods”. The reality it is we now understand earthquakes and material science allowing us to mitigate the bad outcomes by building structures able to handle it. Improved outcomes are the direct result of applying understanding.
You’re talking a time when mental health science was in its infancy and anyone who was not mentally healthy was “not right with God” (many in my generation even heard this, especially if raised in certain Christian denominations). We know drastically more now. Whether that science aligns with one’s world view or not is irrelevant to the outcomes it predicts and/or measures.
One could argue that “licks” were common and then extrapolate out to the negative issues we have now in the US that maybe those licks and “attitude corrections” did more harm than good and maybe that generation isn’t as well adjusted as they want to believe, since they set the conditions for a lot of todays problems.
Absolutely. My daughter strives to do good for the sake of it, most likely in part due to positive reinforcement but it’s also an innate part of who she is to help/please/express empathy et cetera. She’s young, but so far timeout is the worst punishment she’s seen and she gets a three count warning for that. I normally get to one and there’s an immediate attitude shift.
Fortunately she was never interested in outlets. We plugged them and baby proofed in general as much as possible but you can absolutely bet I would spank her if she kept finding her way in to the sharp knife drawer somehow, at an age where she wouldn’t understand an explanation. (In reality I’d find a new location or better locks but imagine a more permanent danger). I would much rather instill the fear of a spanking than find out what a fear of knives looks like.
And this aversion tactic is exactly where I personally see value in corporal punishment, delivered deliberately.
I got spanked a lot as a kid. Not without my parents trying all the shit in books of the day first. I was a stubborn, strong willed kid. Often putting myself in danger despite best efforts. There were absolutely times I found my dad scary as he was typically the one, but only when I knew a spanking was coming. There was no lasting damage and especially as I got older and developed context. I know it was a last ditch effort to create a an aversion where consequences could’ve been much larger.
And so far studies I am reading deviate from corporal punishment itself and extrapolate to flat out abuse in an attempt to put them under the same umbrella. They aren’t.
Is corporal punishment ideal or a first line tactic? No. Is it effective when used appropriately? Absolutely. Not every kid is a “yes sir” bobble head naturally.
This is where more knuckle headed people depart. I did my best to childproof too, because honestly, I’d feel like a complete jagoff if my son got hurt due to my own negligence. I used similar measures like socket plugs, cabinet door locks, etc.
And the knife drawer is actually a good example. Thats a concrete object that can be taught No! about, and care taken to ensure the big shiny thing doesn’t fall into wrong hands, because “sharp” is hard to teach. But electrical outlets? Much more abstract, those mystical little doorways into another dimension are. I used my own made up rule of thumb that the more removed from direct understanding something is, the more it needs to be protected.
There was an incident at his daycare involving hand soap that really pissed me off. He was left to wander outside of the 3 & under room, and got into the bottle of coconut pina colada whatever hand soap in the bathroom, and drank/ate it all. The daycare workers then reported it to me as him having done something bad. I went apeshit. Then, talking to the owner, find out that they didn’t have the original container, no msds, no emergency procedures in place, nothing in the event of accidental poisoning or injury.
Had to find a new daycare after that debacle. That place was trash.
I did that too, and started to imagine a child-safe house.
Farmers doors everywhere. And the bottom half on every staircase, top and bottom
All light switches, outlets, and door knobs are at chest hight.
Fireplaces have a porticullus.
Bathrooms with toilets that you have the ability to set a morse code pattern to flush.
Soap dispensers that have a 30 minute do not use setting.
Why are air vents on the floor?
Some kind of reverse shower curtain that pulls out of the edge of the tub and can be sealed securely so they dont rip it down.
Master bedrooms with 3 closets, one for each parent, one for anything you dont want the kids to destroy, like
impprtant documents, drugs, weapons, art, sentimental stuff, sexy time stuff, presents you dont want them to see.
Have the bottom three feet of every room be a chalkboard or something they can draw on and is easy to clean up.
Now that I think about it, I had way more latitude than I probably should have when it came to actually hazardous things.
I had a hobby of mixing random chemicals I found around the house and was allowed to use the stove and oven very young
I think the real miracle in my family is my little brother. He got it hard from mum and me (somewhat unintentionally though). I did some things I regret very much, and somehow he either hasn’t processed it, or is just too nice
A buddy of mine was changing his kid’s diaper and found one of his wife’s hairs wrapped around the kid’s parts from the last time he got changed. That became a thought that ran through my head every time I changed a diaper for a few months after that. I have longer hair than my girlfriend, so it’d be on me if that happened, haha.
It’s amazing how a sort of ancient instinct to protect kicks in once becoming a parent. I swear the first few days senses are heightened as you assess every little potential danger, beginning with hospital ceiling tiles that “could” fall as you exit the building.
I would’ve been furious too at @SkyzykS daycare experience. Our daycare basically wasn’t feeding my daughter as an infant. She would choke so the doctor told us to use smaller bottle nipples than the standard age recommendation which meant longer feeding times, by a lot. She would come home hungry with daycare reports of “crying non-stop” and was losing weight on doctor charts. I had the owner pull cameras and we watched hours of video of the workers basically getting tired of feeding and simply not doing it. She would get maybe a third of her bottles down. I have never had to practice self-restraint so intentionally. I remember a visceral feeling of what murder must feel like right before it happens but worked through getting all involved parties fired immediately instead, with a state inspection scheduled and then switched daycares too.
Although we did baby proof as much as possible, I realized it’s impossible and probably detrimental to create a complete “bubble boy” environment. Danger exists in life and responses to it or how to avoid it must be learned, often beginning with why to avoid something. Until this is an actual possibility (with shifting goal posts for age/experience and complexity of danger), it’s the parents duty to shield and protect as much as possible. And I believe this same protective love is where corporal punishment comes from. True corporal punishment, doled out deliberately with a purpose. Create the identifiable consequence where one can’t be understood at a given point in time as a method of protection if a lock or whatever isn’t available or practical. 180 degrees different than punching a kid because daddy is mad. That’s abuse.
I must admit that might be on to something about corporal punishment causing trauma. I hadn’t experienced it until now, and your post seemed to solidify it. A STEM making an argument using “maybe.” I feel the trauma every time I read those words coming from a STEM, and the only explanation I can see is my horrible, unthinkable experience of corporal punishment.
Now to find a psychologist and begin treatment to hope to recover… “Maybe” you have one to recommend